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Yesterday, at 5 AM, I made the executive decision to call in sick.  I had a MASSIVE headache, the kind where even your cheekbones hurt, and stomach pains.  I had been trying to horde my PTO, but no way was I talking to people all day with that kind of a headache.  After Jim came home, he felt my forehead and announced that I also had a slight fever.  I didn’t even know that.  I just thought it was a little warm, but we’ve been having a heat advisory, so I didn’t think much of it.  So much for my theory that my issues were blood sugar related.

Today?  Day two of staying home.  It’s not nearly as bad as yesterday, and I had a heated debate with myself whether or not I’d go in.  I feel better but still not 100%.  I decided, hell, I still have 1 unscheduled PTO day left, I should be getting another one back tomorrow and a few more hours back sometime in November.  (I was late to work around then due to a flat tire.)  I’d rather just stay home and get completely over it rather than go in, drag whatever this is out, and end up calling in sick later in the week anyway.

But staying home sick is boring.  Okay, yesterday, I didn’t have much problem because mostly I slept.  A LOT.  I guess I should have been clued in that something was up over the weekend when I took a nap Saturday afternoon.  I never nap.  But I slept all yesterday afternoon, went to bed early last night, and slept until 9 this morning, which is late for me.  Even for sickness, I think I’m all slept out.  I feel kinda spacy, so I’m glad I didn’t go to work (keeps me from screwing up and getting an error), but now I’m in strange place: Well enough to be bored but not really well enough to feel like doing anything about it, either.

I really wanted to use my unscheduled PTO for something like, you know, deciding out of the blue to ditch work and go to the zoo or something, not for actually being sick.  Oh, well.  I guess that’s why we tend to call them sick days.

So, right now, I’m writing in here (I always feel like writing, even when I am sick) and watching Supernatural.  The comments to last entry has convinced me that I really must watch Firefly.  According to Kyle and Ruth, it’s a must-see.  Like I said, I’ve always wanted to see it, I just never got around to it.  Maybe I’ll ask for it for my birthday, which is only a couple months away.  If I ever pick up knitting again–and you know I will–I might try doing that Jayne hat, even if I’ll never, ever wear it.  Why?  Because, apparently, other people would.  Maybe I’ll make one for them.  Like I said, it does look fun to make.  I just can’t fathom why anyone would wear it, but those people who would would at least give me an excuse to make it.

Thanks to Kyle’s wife Nikki, by the way, for linking me a pattern to it on our forums.  I have bookmarked it.  In fact, I think I’m going to put that as a planned project on a site I just found yesterday, during the time I was actually awake.  The site is called Ravelry.  I still haven’t sorted out what all you can do there, but I guess you can get patterns, keep a “notebook” of your current projects, keep inventory on your needles, stuff like that.  Interesting stuff.  Well, if that’s the kind of stuff you like.

I did a lot in the short time I was awake yesterday.  I opened an account on Etsy, for one.  I like the homemade stuff idea.  Plus, I saw on Ruth’s blog that she’s opening a shop up there to sell cthulhus, and I’m thinking of buying one from her.  I want to see what those things look like in real life; I think I might try my hand at one.

Of course, this will be after I finish Jim’s pirate ship blanket.

What else?  Oh, yesterday, I tried to get into Live Journal to read someone’s blog and saw the username I wanted was taken.  Surprised, I looked up the journal and realized that my username was taken by ME.  I had opened an account there in 2004 and forgot about it.  Surprisingly, I remembered the password!  So I logged into LJ and joined some communities.  I’m also going to move my Myspace posts there, since Myspace seems to have a glitch where private blogs are no longer private.  (Way to go, Myspace.  And you wonder why everyone is making the jump to Facebook.)  Also, I’ve had some personal stuff pop up that I don’t want to post on a public blog.  So, hey, if you have a Live Journal, add me–http://chaoticspring.livejournal.com/.  You can hear me complain about stuff there.

Most of my posting will remain here, though.

Well, I guess since I’m all slept out, I should look at the Savage Worlds PDF that Kyle linked for us in our forum.  I think even I can manage that.  Besides, I would like to not be late at getting my character created.  I was late for the first character concept because I missed seeing the deadline on our forums, and I felt bad about it.  I don’t want to be late again. 

I wish Jim were here, though.

So, I lied:  The next “Homebrewed” will not be a long post.  In fact, it will be the shortest one to date.  Natalia didn’t even have any encounters.  I’m telling ya, we’ve had so few encounters with how short our game sessions are, that I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting what to roll and what to add.  And Natalia is still stuck on level 9.

Why was it so short?  Well, Natalia finished out the storyline and was preparing for the next part.  I had already told Jim what exactly I had planned on doing.  And I guess Jim didn’t expect me to go from point A to point B so quickly, and to go from point C to point D, Jim had counted on having something else involved, something that we don’t have yet.  I won’t go into it here because his plan hasn’t exactly been “confirmed” yet, but Jim believes it will be.  If he’s right, then it’ll be changing the game up a bit.

You’ll see.

Moving on.  First of all, Happy Father’s Day to the dads out there.

(Suckers.)

Secondly, Jim told me once that one of the reasons why he reads my blog is to find out what I want so he can give it to me.  I’m starting to suspect that is true because in my last post, I had mentioned wanting to watch Harry Potter once Jim was done with his Charmed marathon, and last night, he announced he was going to take a break with Charmed, and hey, would I like to watch Harry Potter instead?

WHOA.  My boyfriend really does read my blog to give me things I want?  Reeeeeaaaally…

I will not use my blog for evil, I will not use my blog for evil…

Let’s switch gears because that is what I do best: I am still working away on the pirate ship crochet blanket.  I definitely didn’t buy enough yarn.  Oh my god, nobody told me what YARN WHORES blankets are.  Because of how blocky-looking it’s going to be, I’ve nicknamed it the Lego Pirate Ship Blanket. 

Anyway, I was working on that blanket last night, when I remembered once, long ago, Jim mentioned that there’s a hat in Firefly that everyone he knew tried to make and seemed to fail miserably.  Now, being the fan of Buffy that I am, you’d think I would have seen Firefly.  I have not.  I’d like to, but I just haven’t yet.

So I didn’t know what hat Jim was talking about.  I asked about it last night while crocheting the pirate ship blanket.  He described it to me, and I was like, dude.  That sounds ugly.  Why would anyone want that?  Just because some guy on TV is wearing it?  He said it was stupid-looking, but he remembers everyone trying to crochet it, and by the way–he did not want it.  (I think that was his way of hinting to me, saying Please, don’t look it up and try making it for me.)

Whatever, Jim, because I did a little looking around, and I think he’s talking about this “Jayne hat”:

THIS is what everyone wants to wear??

First of all, looking at this picture, it’s clear to me that the hat is knitted, not crocheted.  Jim did mention last night that none of his friends knew how to knit.  I think I’m the only one he knows that can do a little bit of both.  Anyway, my guess is that they were crocheting the hat.  Nothing wrong with crocheted hats, but I suspect that’s why Jim didn’t think any of them looked “right.”  Not that they were necessarily doing it “wrong”–in fact, I saw some pretty comparable crocheted versions of this hat out there–but you know how it goes.  If you’re expecting something EXACTLY one way, any variation could look “wrong” to you.

Second of all, Jim’s right.  That’s one goofy-looking hat.  I guess that is what people think half the fun is.  Whatever, I’m not a fun person.  It does look like it would be fun to make, but hell if I’m going to make something I would never wear.  If you would, though, more power to you.  I, on the other hand, am about function: I hate the crocheted roses and muffins and crap that doesn’t really do anything.  Furthermore, I find them ugly.  If I’m going to spend time making something, it has to be useful.  Like, you know, a blanket.  Even if it does have a dorky, blocky-looking pirate ship on it.

Although I am thinking about making one of those mini-Cthulhus I’ve seen online, just so Gremlin can bat it around.  Who doesn’t want to see a kitten take on Squid Face?

The look of this blog will inevitably keep changing in the next few weeks or so.  So far, I just can’t find anything I really like.  Most themes are too complicated.  I don’t really want a five-column blog.  I want two.  Maybe three, tops.  I don’t want it loaded with graphics that mean nothing to me.  But the more simple-looking blogs are so boring. 

I also prefer not to have a dark background.  What am I, some sixteen year old goth kid?  (The right answer, by the way: Hell.  No.)

So, I’ve determined that I’m going to have to dig up and dust off my old CSS skills and try my hand at my making my own template.  Something that used to come so easily to me now daunts me.  But I’ll muddle through.  Just not tonight.

In other news, this is day two of not playing Warcraft.  What makes it harder is that, technically, my account is still active until something like Janauary 8th.  And without it, I sit here and wonder what I should do.  But that’s kind of the whole point of this experiment–trying to take care of some things and find other things I like.  Trying to create more tangible things rather than new characters.

But it’s not easy.  I’m a little interested in everything and I have no real interest in anything.   I remember I used to be into knitting and crocheting; my yarn now sits next to the rocking chair, with only the kitten paying any attention to it whatsoever.  Jim and I made a pact to get back to writing again, but it’s hard for me to write without an assignment driving me.  Jim told me the other night that he thinks I should try drawing.  I’m flattered that he thinks that with practice, I’m good enough to actually do something with it.  But seriously, I haven’t really drawn much of anything in 14 years.  And, like writing, I stare at a blank sheet of paper and am helpless.

Sometimes, I envy Jim.  I know he likes that I’m the more low-key part of the relationship, the yin to his yang and what have you.  I’m the grounding factor, I know this.  But I love how dynamic he is, how full of ideas and excited he is about things.  I feel like most days, I’m just coasting through, trying to cause as few ripples as possible.  It seems a little sad, to live life this way.

Nothing a Prozac won’t cure, I’m sure.   Except, of course, I’m not on it.

Topic change!  Last night, I actually remembered to log into AIM and got to talk to my buddy Adam again.  It was really great.  I used to consider him one of my best friends, and his support was especially appreciated during my divorce.  He’s a GM now for a gaming company that creates MMOs.  (Sorry, Adam, I forgot the name of it!)  But, my, how have things changed.  Several years ago, when Adam and I first started talking, I was married, he was single, and we both were unhappy.  Now?  I’m with Jim (of course) and he’s with a girl named Jillian.  Now our conversations consist of us gushing over our significant others and patting ourselves on the back for dating the most awesome people ever.

I guess I should probably wrap this post up.  I want to read a little more of Kelley Armstrong’s Personal Demon.  I’m having a harder time getting into it than I did her other books.  Hope just isn’t growing on me as a character.  I find her dull and flat.  But it does have some chapters written in Lucas Cortez’s perspective, and Lucas is one of my favorite characters in the Women of the Otherworld series.  (Yes, a MALE character is one of my favorites.  Does that shock you?)  So that’s a plus.